Earthsiege
by Ichabod Ebenezer
Summary: Nth Doctor part 11a of 12. A swarm is approaching the Earth, but what is it, and what is the purpose? UNIT gets the Doctor involved, and things get worse.
1. The Arrival of the Swarm

"You've all arrived on a particularly exciting day!" the man guiding the NASA tour said over enthusiastically. "As of oh-nine-hundred hours this morning, the Cassini space probe has completed another death defying dive into the gap between Saturn's closest ring, and the planet itself! Cassini is nearing its end of life, so with little more to lose, we're trying the risky stuff. Who knows what could happen? Perhaps there's another undiscovered ring in that gap? Maybe even a small moon that has thus far escaped photography. But don't worry, we think the risks are relatively minimal, even now. But the rewards! We'll know more about the atmospheric conditions on Saturn than —"

"Mr. Cafferty!" Another man in a lab coat came running up to him.

"I'm with a tour, Hamilton. Can it wait?" Mr. Cafferty said, peeved by the interruption.

"No, sir. Sorry, sir. No one could find you earlier," the man said with a nervous look at the crowd of tourists.

"I left my phone somewhere," Cafferty said. He turned to the tour group. "We'll just be a moment. Please stay as a group. See if you can come up with any questions for me." He turned his back on them and whispered, "Yes? Out with it."

"The Spitzer team got some really exciting pings in the infrared, and they asked us to repoint our cameras."

"What? Now? During the dive?"

"Yes sir. It seems to be a comet swarm. No one's ever seen one before, and it just happens they were passing by Saturn."

"Well, you tell them they're out of luck. We're not hunting comets, we're making discoveries about the formation of large bodies in the outer solar system."

"Um, yes. It's just that we couldn't find you earlier, and they were very convincing…"

"You repointed the cameras, didn't you?"

"The swarm passed in a matter of hours, whereas we can perform another dive in a week. Saturn will still be there."

"Hamilton, I'm beginning to question why you are on this mission." Cafferty turned back to the crowd, and his broad smile was back in place. "Wow. What a lucky day indeed. I've just been informed that we have received a new imaging target. A once-in-a-lifetime cosmic event occurred just as the dive was beginning, and _the team_ decided to realign our scientific instruments and capture that instead. Now, we're just outside mission control right now. The first images of this unprecedented event will be coming in in about…" he swung around to face Hamilton, who was still standing there, a bundle of nervous energy.

Hamilton jumped, realizing all eyes were on him. He looked at his watch. "Uh, eight minutes, twelve seconds. Sir."

Cafferty swung back toward the group, smiling excitedly. "Just about eight minutes." He paused dramatically, looking from face to face. "Now, I know I want to see those shots, hot off the press, and if you've come on a NASA tour, there's a good chance that you do too. What do you think, Mr. Hamilton? If we're really quiet and stay in the back, do you think we can go inside for a minute?"

"You mean like all the tours do, sir?" Hamilton asked quietly. Cafferty's smile remained firmly in place, but one eyelid began twitching rapidly.

Understanding dawned on Hamilton's face, and he said in a much louder voice, "Well, with such a good group as you've got today, I don't know how we can say no!"

"Excellent! Come on everyone! Hamilton, lead the way."

The group crossed the atrium, and Hamilton held open one of a pair of double doors. "Quietly now, this is where the magic happens," Cafferty said as the group went inside.

It was exactly what they'd expected inside, and the group started taking photographs. There were four rows of computer consoles, with several people monitoring them. Many were wearing headsets and speaking in tones too low to be heard by the tour group. The far wall was a series of huge screens. On the left was an image of Saturn with a blinking dot that represented Cassini's last calculated position. A dotted line showed the path of Cassini's recent dive. The middle screen showed a top down shot of Saturn with circles representing each of the rings and moons in their projected orbit. A yellow dot represented Cassini. The rightmost screen showed a model of Cassini with read-outs of all of its system functions.

"Everyone line up back here, along this railing," Cafferty said in hushed tones. "The photos will be coming through soon."

While the group was filing in, a group of scientists came to stand nearby, and Mr. Cafferty stepped away to conferred with them in angry whispers. "Bill, were you the one who made this decision?"

"Ryan, don't start. If you aren't going to answer your phone, someone is going to have to decide. They had a compelling argument, and the president himself endorsed it. Something that hasn't ever been seen before, versus something we'll get another chance at next week. I know you had some skin in this one, but I felt certain the science would win you over."

Cafferty sighed. "Alright then, tell me it was just the camera mount. Tell me the rest of the instruments are taking measurements on Saturn."

"No Ryan, it's the full suite. They wanted infrared and compositional information on these too. They also wanted radar, so we'd know when they'd reach Earth orbit. If they're heading toward us, it's a matter of emergency preparedness."

"But the polar aurora hasn't been measured this far north before! We may never get a chance to get _those_ readings again either!"

"I'm sorry, but the decision's been made. We all think it's worth it."

Cafferty opened his mouth to argue some more, but someone sitting at one of the forward banks called out, "The first image is coming in now!"

"Thank you Rasheed," Cafferty said. He turned back to the tour group. "This is it. I'm sure you're going to want to get your cameras out. Do remember that there's a lot of work going on here too though, so please respect that this as a workspace." Then he turned back to watch the screen himself.

The middle screen had gone blank, and a line was moving across, from left to right at the very top. It got to the far right, then started again on a second row, and so on down the screen. It was still mostly black, but people gasped as the first bit of white to show up on screen. After another ten or fifteen seconds, the image was complete. Applause started at the front of the room and made its way back. Someone shouted out, "Woo!"

There were a hundred or so bright white balls in a roughly egg shaped distribution across the screen, each with a long tail extending back and to the left, fuzzing out around the edges. The image was quite clear, and the tails were detailed, but the comets themselves were indistinct because of how bright they were.

"I thought it would be in color!" a child's voice called out from the line of visitors.

Cafferty turned to see a father shushing a young boy. "The next one will be in color. We always take one, just for the public, but it takes eleven times more data storage and transmission, and ironically, contains less useful data. We have a program that combines all the layers, rather than feed it in raw, so once we have the image, it will come up all at once."

They looked back at the screen and had to wait what seemed like a very long time, then the image in front of them just popped in, in color.

The viewers started murmuring, and camera flashes went off. The ball at the head of the comet could now be seen as roughly spherical, slightly wider than tall. Overall they looked blue, with a distinct blue tail out the back, but there were speckles of other colors on the head of the comet, mainly reds and pinks and whites. Conversations could be made out among the scientists around the room, mainly discussing the swarm's regular distribution, and how similar all of them were in size. One of the scientists even approached the screen and held up an eight by eleven sheet of paper to one of the comets, then a few more. Each time, he just about covered the head entirely.

Then the next picture came in, black and white again. One of the computer techs moved the color picture onto the right hand screen for the public, while the black and white image filled the center screen, row by row. This image looked nearly identical to the previous image, except all the comets had moved roughly a foot to the right on the enormous screen.

Even Cafferty was getting excited now, and was huddling with the others in the group. "Carolyn, do we have any idea of the size of those comets, or of their distance from Cassini? The change in location between images looks… significant." The date stamp of each photograph was written on the lower right-hand corner. It was only three seconds between frames.

Carolyn began conferring with some of her colleagues. If they assumed the comets were composed of water ice, their albedo would tell them fairly accurately the distance to the swarm, they agreed, but the calculations would take longer than the time until the radar data came in.

They were so engrossed in their conversation, they didn't notice that another image had come in, replacing the previous one, until one of the visitors said, "Hey! That one's not in the swarm anymore."

They stopped all conversation, and looked up at the screen. The main body of the comet swarm was still an egg shape, evenly distributed across the right end of the screen, but now there was clearly one outlier.

"Rasheed," Cafferty called out. "Bring up the previous one."

After a few key clicks, the previous image came back in. It was clearly an egg shape, without any outliers. "And forward…" Cafferty said.

The image jumped about a foot to the right, with one bright spot out of place.

"There!" one of the techs yelled, pointing at the screen. There was an empty space just left of center, near the bottom of the swarm. Rasheed brought up the previous image, and the dot was there, then the next, and the dot was out of formation, to the left of the swarm.

The scientist at the front of the room slowly raised the piece of paper up to the misplaced dot. It was clearly larger than the paper. "That's not possible," someone said, but everyone was thinking it.

The next image was coming in, and row by row it was slowly replacing the current one. Not a sound could be heard in the room, save for the fans on individual computers, as everyone waited for what the new photograph would reveal.

The man in the front of the room didn't need to hold up his paper, the outlier was now clearly double the size of the others. "There's no tail on that one!" someone said.

"It's coming straight for Cassini!" Carolyn surmised.

A chilling silence filled the room, that was only broken by a click and a flash from the back.

"Cameras!" Cafferty yelled. "Security! Collect those cameras! No one leaves this room until all bags are searched!"

* * *

"Sadie, dear, do you have a moment?" Pandora's mother said as she stepped into the kitchen, sorting through mail. She sat down at their little breakfast table and placed several envelopes in front of her, and another group off to the side.

"Sure, mum," Pandora said. She stood at the sink, elbows deep in suds, with a long-handled scrubber in one hand, and a clutch of silverware in the other. She looked over her shoulder. "What'cha got?"

"I think it's time to discuss which A levels you'll be taking."

"Seriously, mum? Now?" She dropped the silver in the drying rack and shut the tap, then turned, wiping her hands on a dish towel. "I only just finished my GCSEs."

"Yes, dear, but you should have, over a year ago, shouldn't you? It's lucky the school board let you take them and all. And besides, you did so well, I thought you might want to broaden your subjects."

"Yeah, like what?"

"Well, like physics for one."

"Physics?"

"Well, you've a unique learning experience, haven't you? If that Doctor friend of yours can't teach you physics, who can, hey?"

Pandora turned back to the dishes. "And if I'm taking physics, I suppose I'm taking maths too?"

"And history…"

"History as well?" Pandora said incredulously.

"And why not? Who can say more about China's first emperor than someone who's met him?"

"And what job do I get with physics and history A levels?" Pandora called over her shoulder.

"Well, you've got your options open, haven't you?"

Pandora sighed. "It's not really like that, you know? Maybe you pick up a bit of history, but really it's about life, and what it means, and just… doing the best you can for people. Traveling with the Doctor… Life is exciting, and… meaningful. Yeah, that's the word. What I do everyday matters. But I these times too. The quiet times. Just chatting with you, and… doing dishes and stuff. I never appreciated chores before. I remember whinging on about taking out the trash and all, but now… It's just great, how absolutely normal this is, you know?"

Pandora turned to see her mother holding her hands up in frightened silence. There were a pair of soldiers in the kitchen wearing tactical vests and holding semi-automatic weapons at the ready. Standing in the doorway, was a dark-haired woman with glasses, wearing a lab coat over a paisley tie and a jumper covered in question marks. "Well, this just got awkward," said the woman.

Pandora had a moment of panic, thinking about her box all the way in her room.

"Stand down, men," said a short-haired blonde woman in a trench coat and grey scarf, as she stepped into the room. She thrust out her hand toward Pandora. "Kate Stewart, Chief Science Officer of UNIT. Sadie Sladen, we need your help."

"You… know me?" Pandora said, shaking Kate's hand with her own soapy one.

Kate didn't miss a beat, drying her hand off on a towel that hung from the oven handle. "Yes. We've been following you since you broke in to this country's most secure facility."

"Hiya. Remember me?" Osgood asked.

"You what?" Pandora's mother asked.

"Yeah, forgot to mention. Sorry, mum," Pandora said, then to Kate, "Are you arresting me?"

"Nothing of the sort. We need to get in contact with the President of the World."

"The world doesn't have a president…" Pandora said with narrowed eyes.

"She means the Doctor. We need to speak with him," Osgood said.

Pandora took a moment to think about what she should do. If she called the Doctor, would she be luring him into a trap? If she didn't, what would these soldiers do to her? To her mum? Was this one of those times when she should just stand up and take it anyway, for the greater good? Then came a sound that took the decision out of her hands. The echoing, grinding noise of the Tardis materializing.

"You lot are in trouble now, because here he comes!" she said defiantly.

"Sorry, that's my mobile," Osgood said, fumbling to turn her phone off.

"Miss Sladen, if you're under the impression that we're here to capture, or punish you or the Doctor, let me assure you that is not the case," Kate said. "I appreciate that you want to protect your companion, but we're here because we need his help. We are only hours from an alien incursion, and the Doctor may be our only hope."

Pandora looked back and forth between Kate and Osgood's earnest faces. "I'm going to need my phone."

* * *

The Tardis materialized in the corner of the already crowded kitchen of Madeline Sladen and daughter. The door opened up, and the Doctor leaned out, holding a diving helmet under one arm, and dripping water on the linoleum floor. "You pulled me out of a birthday party on Enceladus in the twenty-seventh century. I hope whatever it is, it's important." Then he noticed Kate. "Oh," he said. He tossed the helmet back into the Tardis, stepped outside and closed the door behind himself.

"Mr. President, Incursion Protocols are in place, and I'm here to brief you," Kate said. "Sam?" She held a hand out toward one of the soldiers, and he handed over a sealed manila folder.

The Doctor walked past her as he crossed the room. "Pandora, could you help me with this?" His eyes never left Kate's. Pandora helped with a couple buckles, and the Doctor shrugged out of the diver's suit. Then he turned to Pandora's mother and said cordially, "Ms. Sladen, so nice to finally meet you. Do you mind if I take a seat?" He pulled one of the chairs out from the breakfast table and sat down to remove the suit's boots.

"If I may continue, Mr. President," Kate said, breaking the seal on the folder.

"Don't call me that," the Doctor interrupted. "You may not have heard, so I don't really blame you, but I'm on vacation."

"And we've left you alone, even after you broke into the Black Archive. For which you still owe me a vortex manipulator."

"Ah, you'll have to take that up with my wife."

"Well, that's a write-off then. Yes, we got that you wanted to be left alone based on how you handled the theft of the Metabelis crystal. But the threat to the Earth is one that I'm afraid requires your attention." She read his face for a while, and finally added. "Doctor, please take a look at what I have, then decide what you want to do."

He made no move to dissuade her, so she continued. "Yesterday morning, Spitzer picked up what looked like a comet swarm heading for the inner solar system. Twenty hours ago, the Cassini Space Probe cameras were repurposed to get some images of this theoretical event." She opened up the folder, pulled out the top photo and laid it down on the table between the Doctor and Madeline.

"Too regular a distribution to be a natural event," he said immediately. She laid down a second photo showing one of the dots breaking formation, then a third where the swarm was all but obscured by the one object.

"Four minutes later, we lost contact with Cassini." She pulled out another photo. "This is a close up from that last photo. The rest of the swarm was just about side on, and this one was unobstructed." She laid it down on top of the others. It was highly pixilated, but it could be seen that the tail was actually an exhaust plume, and the shape of the main body hinted at something robotic. "Does the design look at all familiar?"

The Doctor picked up the photo and looked at it closely. "Do you have any idea as to the size of this object?"

"Yes," Kate flipped a few sheets. "Approximately .25 meters around and one meter long. Doctor, if you've seen these before, who are we up against?"

The Doctor stared at the photo for a while longer, then set it down. "No idea. I've never seen them before."

Kate went on. "Eight hours later, we lost contact with Juno. Half an hour ago, it was the Mars rovers and orbiters. All of them. We've since gotten confirmation that we haven't heard from either Voyager probe, the Pioneers or New Horizons in more than a day. Spitzer has taken a few more shots of the swarm, and found that it has broken up. One is heading for each of the observers and explorers in the solar system. Akatsuki, Stereo, Hayabusa 2, Dawn, Osiris-Rex, but the vast majority are headed straight for Earth. At current estimated speed, they will be here in under four hours. And they are destroying everything the come into contact with."

* * *

The Doctor pulled a magnifying glass from one of his pants pockets and examined the robotic closeup again. "How many are coming for Earth directly?" he asked without looking up.

"Eighty-three," Osgood said. "We don't have the resources to track them individually, but that's the main cluster, and it's heading this way."

"And, what year is this? 2017? You've got roughly ten observatories on and around the moon, but hundreds of satellites in orbit. Let's assume they give most of those a miss and concentrate on the significant ones. You need to evacuate the ISS and the UNIT Space Platform, now. And we'll need to be there when one of these lands."

"Doctor, we can't let them land. They destroy everything they touch."

"I don't think their aim is destruction. I think they are simply homing in on radio transmissions. When they reach the source at six hundred kilometers per second, destruction is just something that happens."

"How are we going to predict where they land?"

"There are literally millions of radio transmitters across the world, and the swarm can pick probably sixty at most. We can improve our chances a bit by organizing a shutdown of radio and television stations in the ten minutes or so before they hit. Now there are a number of extremely probable targets, Jodrell Bank and the Woodpecker come to mind, but only one that I can think of that they couldn't avoid."

"Arecibo," Osgood said.

The Doctor stood up. "Bring me my big-old poncey plane, and break out your tildes! We're going to Puerto Rico!"

* * *

The plane had been fueled up and ready at the closest airport before UNIT arrived at the Sladen flat. The soldiers were mainly there to get the Tardis into a lorry and to the plane. Pandora swiveled around in a deeply cushioned chair with her box on her lap, drinking sparkling fruity water, and watching the spectacle of a tightly run world organization at work.

There were twenty other people at Kate's level in there, and each of them was on the phone for most of the ride. They were organizing a world-wide shutdown of television and radio broadcasts, coming up with a believable cover story about a 'period of silence to honor all the media personnel killed or imprisoned in wars and oppressive regimes'. Several UNIT heads from various countries wanted to shutdown their radio telescopes as well, but the Doctor vetoed it. The swarm needed viable targets, or else it would go after HAM operators and the like. Even still, most of the weather, communications and spy satellites were uploaded with instructions to go radio silent for the target period. The rest of the trip, they were organizing quick response teams to be sure that UNIT personnel were first on the scene of each of the landings, wherever they might be. Pandora knew there must be twelve languages being spoken around the massive table, but she understood them all as if she'd been born to them.

The Doctor, Osgood and a UNIT captain named Josh Carter were putting together a plan to catch the object, now being referred to as a 'locust', as it came from a swarm and looked nothing like a bee. There was some concern about what it would do to the radio telescope at Arecibo, but mostly, the Doctor felt sure he could identify its origin and purpose if he could get one intact. He mentioned an energy web, and Osgood was talking about an inertial brake. It all got a bit too timey-wimey for Pandora, and she pulled out her tablet. She was curious as to how the citizen scientists of the world would react. The ones that UNIT couldn't silence _or_ ignore. But so far, her favorite blogs were silent and apparently oblivious.

They touched down on a dirt airstrip that looked way too small for a plane of this size to land on. It must have taken advantage of some of the alien technology that UNIT was privy to though, because it landed smoothly, and with room to spare. They had less than twenty minutes to reach the telescope by waiting jeeps, but they had a plan.

She rode in the back of a jeep with Sam, the soldier from her apartment this morning, as well as a couple more she hadn't met. She was a little put out, not getting to ride with the Doctor, but he was still heavy in conversation with Josh and Osgood, and with the equipment they were bringing with them, there was no room. She didn't make a fuss, but she felt like a serious third wheel, along for the ride.

Sam must have seen the look on her face though, because he smiled and said, "Not much for all the science chatter, eh?"

"Actually, I was always quite good at science. I love astronomy and chemistry and that, but the Doctor's on a whole other plane. I'm surprised anyone can talk to him when he's on about it. What's Osgood's deal?"

"Just about the best the Earth has to offer, and with the clearance to learn from all the goodies from out there," he said, pointing up. "I don't pretend to understand it. I just nod along when she's on a tear, and between you and me, Carter's out of his league too. He's good, but on a human scale. But she can get all this stuff working, she figures it out. You know, she may be a Zygon."

"What's a Zygon?"

Sam laughed. "You don't know about the Zygons? Ask your Doctor about it sometime. But the point is, I don't even know if I've ever met the human Osgood. It's possible she's only this smart because she grew up out there. Not that I'm prejudice or anything. I'd take a bullet for her either way. Have done, a time or two. Just… you've got to wonder."

They lapsed into silence along the bumpy and muddy ride up the side of the mountain. Once they got through the entrance gates, the road was paved, and shortly after, they came over the lip of the crater and could see the telescope proper. Pandora stood up, holding onto the roll-bar to look across at the massive white dish surrounded by three tall towers. "It's enormous!" she said. "They paved the inside of a volcano!"

The soldier in front of her turned in his seat. "It's not, actually. It's a sinkhole, not a volcano. They call it a karst."

Pandora didn't care what they called it, it didn't change how big it was. She'd seen it in movies, like that Bond film with Pierce Brosnan, but figured it was movie magic that made it look so big. If anything it looked bigger up close.

The two jeeps pulled to a stop, and everyone piled out. They only had five minutes left. The Doctor started tinkering with the equipment, and Osgood started giving orders. Pandora decided to just wander over to the edge and take in the view.

Osgood was at her side, surprising her. "Hey. We need you to set up the inertial brake."

Pandora smiled sadly. "I appreciate it, but you don't have to give me a job just to make me feel useful."

Osgood looked back puzzled. "We didn't just waste taxpayer money bringing non-essential personnel just for the weight. You're here because we need you. This device here," she said, lifting up a gun-metal briefcase-sized item, "needs to get up there." She pointed toward a triangular platform suspended high over the center of the dish. "Then you need to activate it. This button here. Okay?"

"You're not going to do that?"

She smiled. "No, I don't think so. I can't handle heights. I'll be on the computers over here. These men are securing the base, and evacuating civilians in case we fail. The Doctor, Sam and Josh are going to place the three endpoints of the energy web. We only have three minutes left until the window opens. Sam's heading up in the lift now. You can make it if you run. Go!"

Pandora took the device by the handle and ran. Sam held the lift to the closest tower. When they got to the top, she had to run across what basically amounted to a rope bridge, with her box in one hand, and the brake in the other. She was higher up than she'd ever been, and one misstep would send her plummeting to the concrete reflecting dish some thirty stories below.

She heard a loud base pulse off to one side while she was half way across the bridge, and she took a tumble when she instinctively looked for the source. She threw her arms up and over the wires that acted as rails, and managed to get both feet up on the grate of the bridge. She saw that the Doctor had activated his device. A second pulse came from behind, and she knew that Sam had activated his as well.

Miraculously, she'd managed to maintain her hold on both her box and the brake, and she started running again, making a mental note not to let it distract her when the third endpoint started up.

She got to the center, and there was a bridge in a ring shape that went around the triangle in the middle. This is where she was supposed to deploy the brake. She set it down on the grating, and pressed the button. The top folded back, and a second layer folded up on the other side. It reminded her of wind blocks on a camp stove. A ring of energy, about the size of a compact disk, floated about half way up in the middle of the device.

Okay. It was activated. Pandora wasn't sure she wanted to be here when the locust came crashing down. She started running back the way she'd come, while Sam was running toward her. The third bass pulse hit her then, and a wave of energy crackled along the space in between the three endpoints. For a moment, she could see the weave of the net just overhead, then it vanished. She stopped, a third of the way along the bridge and looked up into the sky.

There was a sonic boom, and the locust was visible. It was a black spot, surrounded by a fireball, and streaming a long oily tail. She thought back to the meteor Abaddon, and how slowly it seemed to move from tiny speck to blotting out the sky. This was a completely different experience because the locust wasn't visible until it was well within the atmosphere, and it took only seconds to fall to Earth. Suddenly the net activated, a bright blue web flashing just out of reach. It sounded like an explosion, and then it was over.

The locust was suspended, face down, in the air above the inertial brake.

The Doctor came running along another bridge from the next tower, taking his hoodie off as he came. He rushed up to the locust and dropped to his knees, pressed the button on the inertial brake, and caught the locust inside his hoodie as it fell. He looked up at Pandora, Sam and Josh. "It's cool to the touch." Pandora reached out to touch it, but the Doctor pulled away. "Still best not to. No bare skin in case of electrical discharge or something. It appears dormant, but we'll know for sure once I get this into the Tardis for analysis."

"Sorry sir, my instructions are to ensure that gets to the Black Archive for examination," Captain Carter said.

"But I have far more sophisticated analytical tools in my Tardis…"

"I'm sorry sir, but my orders were very specific."

"In that case, I'd like a word with your superior! Oh, wait, that's me!"

"Actually, in military matters, Doctor, that's me," Kate Stewart said, arriving on scene. She walked toward them along the swaying bridge holding out a large plastic chest lined in foam rubber. "And given the destruction these things are causing all over the world right now, this is clearly an item of military significance."

Josh took the Doctor's hoodie, and its cargo from the Doctor, and placed the locust into the locust-shaped hole in the foam rubber. Kate snapped the lid shut while Josh handed the Doctor back his hoodie.

* * *

The Doctor fumed all the way back to the airport, then all the way back to London, then again all the way to the Tower of London. "What's the point of putting me in a position of giving orders if you've no intention of carrying them out?"

He sat in the back of the lab, biting his thumbnails and pacing, while UNIT scientists worked on the locust under a spotlight. It was a mechanical object, ovoid, like an egg that had been stretched out. Its shell was a carbon grey with red markings, and it had a lens at the front, and a thruster array at the back. Parts of it were segmented, suggesting that they opened up, or were meant to be removed, but there were no signs of screws or other fasteners. So far, the scientists had bolted it down to a stainless steel workbench, in case the thrusters fired, and covered the lens with an opaque cap. "No sense in telling them all about us while we're trying to learn about them," Osgood noted.

The scientists were dressed in clean suits, complete with goggles and ultra-fine particle masks. They worked with fine tools, trying to pry it apart at any of the segments, but the seams were just too narrow. Any tools they could manage to wedge between the seams only bent, without so much as wiggling the segments.

Next, they used a portable X-ray to peer beneath the surface of the locust. That proved no more effective, because the X-ray, and later the ultrasound registered it as a solid black mass. "Well, it would, wouldn't it?" the Doctor spat. "That's coated in danedium for re-entry. Only a millimeter thick, but eight times as dense as lead. If you'd let me use my Tardis, I could —"

"Thank you, Doctor, that won't be necessary," Kate said dismissively. "We have rather more invasive means at our disposal."

The scientists next brought in a laser cutter. "Based on Zygon designs," Osgood said. "One of the advantages of securing refugees."

The Doctor looked over at his Tardis, and resumed pacing.

The laser itself was just a pen sized device, but it was attached to the large, wheeled energy source by a boom arm pivoted in three places. Pandora, the Doctor and the others were all given ruby-tinted safety glasses to wear, then the laser was activated. The Doctor scoffed at his, and hung one temple over the neck of his t-shirt. The laser glowed a blinding green, and the scientist working with it moved it painstakingly over the surface of the locust. First she focused on the red, segmented section along the side, then on the grey section just behind the lens. A minute or so later, the laser was shut off. "No go," the scientist said. "We haven't even blemished the paint job."

"Oh, this is ridiculous," the Doctor said. He strode purposefully toward the locust, digging into his inside hoodie pocket.

The scientific team scattered, pushing the laser out of harms way. "Doctor," Kate called out in a commanding voice.

He ignored her and stopped in front of the workbench holding the locust down. He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and activated it, the tip glowing red.

The locust whirred to life, segments extended, twisted and flexed. The forward and rear ends of it separated and folded upward, then the sides moved outward and reconnected. The bolts and metal band securing the locust to the table bent and tore with a terrible scream. A blade extended from the center of the now open locust, pointing upward, and the entire device began to glow and hum.

The Doctor slowly approached the device, looking inside the reconfigured dish-like shape of the locust. He turned to look fearfully at Osgood. "The Black Archive is secured against outside communication?" he asked.

"Yes, of course," she said, a hint of worry in her voice.

"Even sub-space?"

"Yes, why?" she asked.

"On all twenty-two bands?" he pressed.

"Doctor, there are only eleven sub-space bands."

"And each one has a supersymmetric pair!"

"Doctor, what's going on?" Kate Stewart interjected.

"Well, the good news is, we now know the purpose of the locust."

"What, Doctor? What are they here for?"

"To seek out and announce the presence of any sonic technology."


	2. The Siege of Earth

The Doctor leaned over the locust, sticking his sonic screwdriver deep inside its exposed innards. Pandora approached cautiously. "Is it safe?" she asked.

He spared her a glance, then went back to his work. "Should be fine. I don't believe it's weaponized, and it's not radiating anything dangerous."

She stepped closer and went up on tip-toes to watch him. He was sliding back the ring on the side of his sonic, and the four points were converging. Lasers shot out and met just ahead of the tip. "What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to find the off switch. Generally, they don't make it quite so difficult."

Kate strode up to join them. "Doctor, I didn't want you using your Tardis for a reason. I tried to stop you using your screwdriver on it as well, but you ignored me. You should have let us exhaust the low-tech approach before resorting to Time Lord tech. Now, would you please stop your tinkering?"

"Just as soon as I stop it broadcasting our location, you can finish chastising me. There, that's got it." The locust powered down and stopped both glowing and humming. The Doctor turned off his sonic and stashed it in his inside hoodie pocket. "There. You were saying?"

Kate clicked her tongue in exasperation. "It's a bit moot now."

Osgood joined them. "How did you disable it?"

"Turns out there wasn't an off-switch, so I severed the leads to the battery as well as the ambient energy pickups. Don't worry, it won't switch back on."

"So, you have a plan for how to learn more from it now that it's disabled, right?"

"Not a plan as such. More of an intention." He looked at all the disappointed and angry faces around him. "Look, it started broadcasting the moment I hit it with a sonic scan. You have to ask yourselves why. Is it trying to infer a certain technological level based on its presence? Is it using that as a sort of threshold event equivalent to your bronze and iron or telecommunications ages? What does it want that for? Is it another group of alien refugees searching for a society of comparable level that they'd be happy in? Best case. Maybe it's truly a group of locusts, and they are looking to scour planets, and they are trying to verify your resources are worth their while? That's more realistic. How would you defend against a civilization that's accustomed to strip-mining Time Lord planets and the like?"

"All the more reason to know as much as we can about them!" Kate said.

"But even more important not to tell them we're here, because you're really not at their level."

"But they already know we're here. The broadcast went out…" Osgood argued.

"Ah, but we don't know what it sent. What if it only sent spacial coordinates? The Earth has moved thirty-four thousand kilometers in its orbit of the Sun since I stopped the message going out a minute ago. The sun has continued in its own blazing orbit of the Milky Way. The Milky Way has been flying closer to the Great Attractor! Without a constant stream of coordinates, whoever collects this information may show up a hundred years from now to find a different star in this location."

"Seems like a longshot. Surely any astronomical coordinate system is going to include a time vector," Osgood said doubtfully.

"Hope is a longshot. If it weren't for longshots and lost causes, I'd never get anything done. Don't confuse more advanced with more intelligent. Just because they have access to sophisticated machinery doesn't mean they're any smarter than you." He realized he was talking to Osgood and pointed off toward one of the other scientists. "Well, him anyway."

Kate cleared her throat. "What's done is done. What are our next steps?"

Next, we bring all the other locust that made planetfall here. I want to know if they all activated, or just this one. Either way, they shouldn't be spread about.

"Captain Carter and his men are already on it."

"Good. In the meantime, take this locust to somewhere even more shielded. Hook him up to another power source and a terminal. Let's find out what language they speak."

Osgood nodded to the other scientists, and they got moving. She picked up the locust. "There's an isolation booth on level fourteen," she said, and hurried off.

Kate nodded. "I'll get a sit-rep from Captain Carter and find out if the others have activated." She pulled out her phone and hurried off.

Pandora stepped a little closer to the Doctor. "They may not have noticed it, but I saw how you were looking at that thing. Like you were trying to remember something."

The Doctor was biting at his thumbnail again and staring off into the mid-distance. "Mmm," he acknowledged. "There's something. Something vaguely familiar. Like from a great many lifetimes ago. But I can't place it."

* * *

Osgood was elbows deep in the locust when the Doctor and Pandora arrived at the isolation booth. She had a car battery hooked up to a capacitor that was itself hooked up to a volt stepper, and she was trying to jury-rig a connection to the locust's pathways. She already had a laptop out beside it and connected via rainbow cable to the space probe.

The booth was matte black, both inside and out. It was about as tall as a phone box, but three times as wide and twice as deep. It was situated in the middle of an empty warehouse-like room, the only item of interest. The inside walls of the booth were covered in tiles with triangular ridges of varying size, much like soundproofing, but composed of a different material. There was a small window in the door, double-paned, and with a mesh of copper wire running between the leaded glass sheets.

Osgood looked up as they approached, but she continued working. "The laptop is disconnected from the network, and has no wireless. The interior of the walls, floor and ceiling is composed of inch thick lead, and when the door is closed, a mild negative electric current runs through them all. Did I miss anything?"

The Doctor activated his sonic and scanned the room. "You should fluctuate the quantum holes in the subspace foam of the walls, which I can manage from the junction box outside, but other than that, nicely done."

"There, that's got it," she said, finishing up the hookups inside the locust. "Once you close the door, we turn on the power here, and get our readouts here. Anything goes wrong, we detach the anode, and it all shuts down." She looked at Pandora apologetically. "Little Green Men," she said. "Camel-case, no spaces. The Es in green are 3s, and the I is a bang."

"Sorry, what?" Pandora asked.

"Wifi password. It won't work in here, and we can't open the door once we start. It may take an hour or more, and you'll be frightfully bored. Sorry. I noticed you had a tablet in your bag. I thought you'd want to wait out here."

Pandora gave her a grateful smile. "Little Green Men. Got it. Have fun you two." She set her box down against one of the walls of the booth and sat down. She pulled out her tablet, and managed the wifi about the time the Doctor was done with the junction box.

"Knock if you need us," he said, and closed the door.

* * *

She perused her news sites again, and this time there was plenty to go on. Youtube was full of videos from around the world where people had happened to catch the falling 'meteorites' that often ended with large explosions. One video in particular showed some Australian kids playing cricket at a relative's sheep ranch. It turned out his crazy uncle had built an enormous HAM radio antenna out of scrap metal, and they not only caught the moment of impact, but they ran to the scene with the camera still going, and recovered the locust.

That video has been replaying on every news station around the world. Initially, it was labelled a hoax, but with all the other videos streaming in, it gained credence pretty quickly. UNIT authorities soon arrived on-scene and confiscated the device, but not until after the video had gone viral. Soon, more videos started cropping up, some genuine, some faked. One clever hoax used spliced in footage from the recent Tom Cruise 'War of the Worlds' movie where the tripod first crawled out of the ground. People had begun to riot, despite its quick debunking. Amazing that after almost eighty years since Orson Welles famous Halloween broadcast, this classic still caused panic.

An enterprising reporter had noticed how all the videos took place around radio towers, and even where there were no videos, there were emergency calls to put out fires. He put two and two together with the media blackout period, and now there was an international scandal. The media were demanding access to the robotic probes, and the American President, the British Prime Minister and the German Chancellor had all had press conferences urging calm, but otherwise saying little.

The Doctor and Osgood eventually came out of the box looking grim. "I've got a lot to show you," Pandora said, "but first, what did you learn?"

"Not much," Osgood said. "But the message it sent out did include the time coordinate.

"The language it used is a sort of Galactic Standard — not this galaxy, mind you — so we didn't find out much about them, but whoever they are, they know where we are.

* * *

The people of Earth barely had time to fixate on this scandal before things got much worse. By nightfall, a fleet of ships had appeared out of hyperspace in orbit around the Earth.

Kate Stewart, Osgood and the Doctor were called along with the Prime Minister, into a holographic conference with UNIT leadership around the world, as well as the political representatives of those countries. After a very short discussion of how to respond, the Secretary-General of the United Nations gave this short communication: "To the unknown fleet currently in orbit around our planet: Welcome to Earth. I am the elected representative of our council of nations. Let us begin a productive dialog between our two peoples. Please state your intentions here, and we can arrange to receive your delegate to meet face to face."

They waited for any response, and one came shortly. The fleet, composed of thousands of ships slightly larger than an F-35 Lightning II, dove as one into the atmosphere and disappeared from their sensors.

Kate Stewart stepped forward to take command. "Colonel Shindi, find those ships. I want to know where they are heading. UNIT chiefs everywhere, we must assume they are heading in your direction and that they are hostile. Scramble defenses. Prepare for potential civilian evacuations. This is no longer a cover up operation. Ladies and gentlemen, you have maybe ten minutes with your speech writers. Make it a good one." She turned to leave the room. "Osgood, Doctor, Pandora, with me."

They proceeded down the hallway to the guarded lift. From there they could take the underground to the Tower and the Black Archive. "Osgood," Kate continued, "I want the clearest enhanced photograph that we got from that encounter, and I want you and the Doctor working on it now."

The lift doors closed behind them, and they began the trip down. "Doctor, what can you offer me?" Kate asked.

"I'll know more when I see the enhanced photos, but they appeared to be a similar design to the locust, but they're definitely armed. My best guess is that they are unmanned. That means they are acting on pre-arranged instructions, or that they are controlled from somewhere. The dive was coordinated, so either way, they are communicating. If they are acting on the same carrier waves, I can pinpoint the controller, or possibly disrupt their signals."

The doors opened up, revealing the waiting train. "Excellent. Osgood, you two have your mission. Bring those things down, and point me at the enemy command structure. Doctor, I've had your Tardis transported down to level fourteen, near the isolation booth. Hopefully something there will prove useful. Pandora, I know I can trust you to help out where you can."

"You're not joining us, ma'am?" Osgood asked.

"No. Josh and the others will be here with the locust we've managed to get our hands on. Captain Carter is one of the best pilots we've got. I'll need to coordinate and get them back out there. The signal these things are responding to was sent from London. I've got jets to scramble, and a city to defend."

* * *

Osgood, the Doctor and Pandora were looking up at a bank of monitors, a large one in the center, and a group of smaller ones around it.

On each of the smaller monitors was a close up of one of the fleet ships, each from a different angle. Some were more useful than others because many of the angles were not available until after their dive, and they came out blurry.

"Now aren't we kicking ourselves for calling the first group 'locust' so quickly. These are bigger, and they've got those guns on them, so they'll chew through things fairly quickly. What shall we call this lot?"

Osgood was quiet for some time, just staring at the different screens, focusing on the ion cannon on one, and the rotary guns in the next shot. "Piranha," she finally said, in a dry whisper. She took a shot of her inhaler.

The monitor in the center displayed a map of the Earth, the sort that is generally used in global weather patterns. On it, there were large red blobs representing the current location of the swarm. It had broken up, and smaller groups were heading for each of the major population centers. Seoul, Beijing, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, New York. London.

"I want to call my mum," Pandora said.

The other two looked around at her. Osgood's eyes got sad, and she opened her mouth to say something, but the Doctor looked at her, hard. She looked back at him questioningly, then realized he was right. "Yes. Of course."

Pandora pulled out her phone and stepped away from the others. She found her mother's contact and dialed. She had been worried since Ms. Stewart pointed out that London would be a prime target, and now, the longer the phone continued to ring, the more worried she became.

"Hello?"

"Oh, thank god. Mum, you've got to get out of the city." She tried to keep her voice urgent, but not frightened.

"Sadie, love. Have you seen the telly? There are more of those things from your pictures. But they're bigger now!"

"That's what I'm talking about, mum, they are armed, and they're coming this way. You have to go, now!"

"Oh, I'm not going anywhere without you, and besides, you know I don't drive."

"Take a cab, get a Lyft, at least take the Tube! These things are coming by air, you're probably safer underground."

"But what about you?"

"I'm in the most secure building in the U.K., and I've got the Doctor to protect me. I'll be fine." Osgood was getting excited about something, catching Pandora's attention. "Look, mum, I've got to go. Just get safe. Don't worry about me. Now go." She hung up the phone and ran back to join the others. "What's going on?"

"The Doctor was pointing out similarities between the piranha and the locust."

The Doctor pointed to a spot on the back of the ship, just above the wings. This is the spot on the locust where the communication array is. It looks exactly the same. I'm betting it's modular, something the maker uses from one design to the next. If I can hack the locust we've got downstairs, I can send them signals, maybe take them down!"

"Then what are we waiting for?"

They went straight for the lift, and down the twelve floors to the isolation booth.

Osgood started up the computer while the Doctor used his sonic to start pulling parts out of the locust.

Pandora pulled out her tablet to look at news feeds. The very first one she brought up was of a group of American fighter jets soaring in formation above the Hudson Bay, then engaging a group of piranha coming from the other direction. The alien ships were using some sort of disintegration beams. When they shot the fighters, they would disappear in a cloud of sooty dust that drifted slowly to the water below. The fighter jets took out two of the piranha before they were wiped out, and afterward, the piranha turned their guns on the panicking public and mowed them down.

"No, no, no, no!" the Doctor said.

"What's the matter, won't it work?" Pandora asked.

"The communication array will do the job just fine, but there's not enough computing power in this thing! It doesn't take any brains to broadcast a location, but to send a series of complex commands to an entire swarm? That's a different story."

"Hang on, they're bringing a dozen or so more down here any moment now," Osgood said.

"That's no good, none of them are going to have any more power than this one does!"

"But what if we daisy chain them?"

"And use the processing power from the whole lot of them? That just might work! Osgood, why is it I've never shown you the stars?"

Osgood took a deep hit from her inhaler and smiled shyly. "Oh, it would never work between us, I'm married to the job. Let's go pick up those other locust from Lieutenant Bishop."

"Sam Bishop?" Pandora asked. "You guys stay here, set up whatever you need to. I'll get the locust."

"Are you sure?" Osgood asked.

Pandora held up her tablet toward them. She'd paused on an image of one of the piranha firing on an American jet, and the jet disintegrating in a cloud of ash. "Yeah. Time is of the essence."

Osgood nodded. "Up to the second floor, take the left exit. Down the hallway, through the next room, and he should be waiting with a cart."

Pandora put her tablet away in her shoulder bag and took off at a run.

* * *

Pandora made it back with a two-tier cart loaded high with black crates. She started laying out crates and opening them so that the Doctor and Osgood would have easy access to the locust within.

"We need to keep the door to the booth closed until each one is deactivated. I can take four at a time." Osgood and he carried one under each arm and closed the door behind them to work on the first batch. Pandora cleared the empty crates and opened up four more. She looked back at the cart. Four more there. Hopefully that will be enough, but she could make a second trip if it wasn't.

She turned back to her tablet to get the latest. Someone had posted a shaky mobile phone video of a crowd of people taking shelter in a Shibuya shopping center. Twenty seconds into the video, one of the piranha appeared outside the window and turned its rotary guns on them. People screamed and ran for cover as the ones closest to the glass were mown down. The owner of the mobile could be heard screaming for his mother. The camera kept ducking behind a sales rack, then popped up one more time and caught a bullet.

"Probably best if the Doctor didn't see that," Pandora thought. "I doubt that making him angry will do any good right now." She looked for news closer to home.

RAF and UNIT forces had engaged the enemy over the skies of London. There were casualties on both sides, but while the piranha were concentrating on the aircraft, they weren't firing on the people. Pandora breathed a sigh of relief, thinking of her mother again, until she saw a shot of an RAF missile taking out a piranha, which then fell to Earth, and exploded amongst a group of people at the Kensington Tube stop. That wasn't where her mum would be, but she had told her she'd be safer on the tubes.

She couldn't tear herself away from the videos streaming in to the BBC website. All the while, she was dreading seeing her mum there, somewhere among the crowds.

The Doctor came back out of the isolation booth. "Next four," he said.

"Doctor, you have to move fast," Pandora told him.

"I know," he said.

"No, seriously. These things are just blindly killing people all over the world. They take out our defenses, then they just start killing!"

"Seriously, I know. I could see that was their intention from the kind of weapons they had. I've got to go. We can talk once these are ready." He took two back into the booth, then came back for the other two and shut the door behind him.

Pandora cleared the empties and set out the last four. The cart was empty, and she wondered if she should go back for more, just in case. She would just check her tablet again before she went. She watched as this time, French jets took on the piranha over Paris. It was absolutely horrific, the way those alien planes, once they'd taken out the fighter jets, would just turn and start slaughtering civilians. As she watched, she noticed something that she'd seen in the previous videos, but now it really caught her attention. She tossed her tablet onto the cart and ran it back to the lift.

She pressed the up button repeatedly, willing the lift to arrive. "Come on!" Finally it dinged, and the doors opened. She shoved the cart inside, and ran in after it, pressing the button for floor two until the doors finally closed.

When she got to the second floor, she found it empty, save for several stacks of crates that she knew contained the rest of the locust they'd collected. Of course, Sam and the others had left to join the battle raging in the air above London. She had no one to tell about her insight. She considered exploring on her own until she found someone. They must have left a skeleton crew, at least to coordinate things above.

She decided that wandering about without so much as a security badge was probably counter-productive. The only person she knew to tell now was Osgood herself, and she was back down on floor fourteen. If she was going all the way back down there, she would do so with a cart load of crates. She started loading them onto the cart, four on the lower tier, then eight on the upper. She called the lift, and the doors opened immediately.

When she got to the fourteenth floor, the Doctor and Osgood had the locust out on the floor outside the booth. Cables, the likes of which she'd seen in the Tardis console room were connecting them, and glowing faintly. "Ah, there you are Pandora!" the Doctor said as she arrived. "I'm about to attempt a control maneuver. Can you get a live feed on your tablet? No one thought to put a monitor down here, and I need to see what I'm doing."

Well, if the Doctor had control over the piranha, then it hardly mattered that she'd noticed a weakness. "Sure, yeah. I had one up earlier. She brought out her tablet and quickly found a BBC feed showing the battle over London. The RAF jets had been decimated, and most of the resistance came from anti-aircraft emplacements.

She handed the tablet to the Doctor, but he just took her arms and positioned her for a better view. "Just like that, thank you." He moved the cart over next to her and pushed the crates off of it, letting them clatter to the floor. He set the laptop on it and repositioned Pandora one more time, then set to typing at a furious pace. Osgood watched over his shoulder, and Pandora tried to peek as best she could over the top of the tablet.

"Hah! Did you see that? I told them all to bank right, and they banked right. That was me. Or just a coincidence. Let's try again. Left this time." His hands flew across the keys, and he hit enter.

Pandora peeked over the top of the tablet, and saw them all bank left.

"They have a sort of swarm mentality. There's nothing in here for specifics, like 'Third to the right, pitch by twelve degrees.' It's all just goals, and the swarm figures out how to achieve them. Whoever programmed them to begin with seems to have left them with two primary commands. Maximize losses, and destroy resistance. Now let's see if I can get the swarm to ditch in the ocean."

He typed and typed, then hit enter. He watched the screen, waiting. "No… Think more broadly," he said to himself, and began typing again.

The swarm broke away from a strafing run and banked to the southeast. "That's a result! Now to see if they do, in fact, ditch."

"What about the rest of the swarms?" Pandora asked. "They're killing people all over the world."

"Yes, good point. We'll assume these ditch and be satisfied with the fact they've stopped killing. Let's boost the signal and send the command worldwide. Pandora, see if you can pick up another feed."

He started typing while Pandora found CNN. It was currently showing a battle taking place over Los Angeles. She turned the tablet back around. The Doctor stepped back from the laptop and pulled out his sonic screwdriver. He pointed it at the chain of locust laying on the floor and activated it. After several seconds he turned it off and hit the enter key.

They watched, and waited, and after a minute or so, the ships all banked off to the west. "Quick, somewhere else. Somewhere further. Sydney, maybe? No! Rio."

Pandora didn't know a Brazilian news source off the top of her head, so she Googled it and found streaming news in Portuguese. She turned the tablet around and watched from above as the news anchor was very excitedly talking about the swarm of alien jets breaking off and leaving the city. They showed footage of them heading away while the anchor spoke. A reporter in the field broke in and mentioned that they ships around the world were all breaking away and heading out to sea, possibly to regroup.

Osgood held up her phone. "I'm going to report in." She walked off and spoke in low tones.

"This is good, right?" Pandora asked.

"I'll feel better when I see them hit the ocean," he said, and started biting his thumbnail, watching the screen.

No one seemed to have a camera following any of the swarms. The Doctor was getting more and more frustrated, and kept telling Pandora to switch to a new feed. Finally, he called out to Osgood, "Is there any confirmation yet?"

She covered up the mouthpiece on her phone and said, "Not yet. Stand by. Ms. Stewart is here and on her way down."

The Doctor started pacing.

"They're heading out to sea, but not into the water," Osgood announced.

"There must be something I missed," the Doctor said. He returned to the computer and started typing. "Anything?" he called out.

"Hang on," Osgood called back. "No, no change. Wait!" She was silent while she listened on the phone. The color drained from her face, and she turned toward the Doctor. "There's another ship in orbit. A big one."

"They must be countering my commands," he started typing again. "Somebody get me information! Pictures! Anything!"

The lift dinged, and Kate Stewart stepped out, followed by two guards. She quickly assessed the situation and crossed the room to stand by Pandora.

Pandora was searching the web, trying to find the new ship in orbit, but none of the news stations were aware of it yet. Osgood was on the phone with someone in the field. "Send me what you've got." She pulled the phone away from her face, and watched for the message to come across. "Got it. Doctor!" She ran to show him the photo, and he met her half way.

It was much larger than the previous ships, looking like the whole fleet could have fit in its launch bay. It had the same color scheme as the others, and it was armed to the teeth, but there was one small detail that the Doctor immediately latched onto, tapping at the screen with one finger. "Windows. You don't give a ship a view unless there's going to be someone to appreciate it!" He ran back over to the laptop, and dismissed the app he had been using, bringing up instead the microphone.

"Hello, alien invaders. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and suggest you don't know what planet you are currently orbiting. This is the Earth. It has played host to a vast array of alien invaders in the past and it has turned them all away. The Sycorax have perished here, the Atraxi, run in fear. The Daleks, the Cybermen, the Ice Warriors, the Axons, the Krynoid, the Kraal, the Kastrians, the Nestine, the Gelth, the Racnoss, The List. Goes. On! If you think you have what it takes to conquer this planet and its people, then ask yourselves why so many have failed before you. Ask yourselves what you've got that they haven't got. What is it about this planet, this simple primitive people who have turned away all comers? Consider long and hard, then take your toys and go home, because this planet is protected! Because I am the Doctor, and I will stop you!"

He released the key he'd been holding down on the laptop and waited for a response.

"I just got serious head-to-toe goosebumps," Osgood said.

There was a clicking sound coming from the speakers, then a gravelly voice spoke. "Thank you for the confirmation, Doctor. We are here for you."

The Doctor seemed utterly surprised. He pressed the key again. "For me? There are better ways of getting my attention. Try putting a social event on my calendar next time." He clicked off, but no response came. He pressed the key once more. "What makes you think you can take me? Who exactly are you?"

There was nothing but clicks on the other end for a long while, then the voice spoke again. "If you try to hide amongst the people of Earth, we will kill them all until we find you. If you try to run, we will burn this world and we will still come for you. If this world fights back, it will be crushed. If you give yourself up, they may live." It paused for a short time, then said, "The Droge of Gabrielides sends her regards. Did you think she forgot?"


	3. The Bounty

Everyone stood in stunned silence, considering the ramifications, considering what few options were available to them.

The Doctor turned, a determined look on his face, and headed toward his Tardis.

"Sergeant, stop him. Don't let him leave!" Kate Stewart called out. The two uniformed men that she'd arrived with positioned themselves in front of the Tardis, blocking his way.

The Doctor stopped and turned on Kate. " _You're_ going to stop me, Kate Stewart? _You're_ going to get in my way?" he said accusingly. "I wasn't going to run you know. I would never. The people of this planet are too important to me. I was about to give myself up."

"That was exactly what I thought you were going to do, Doctor, and I forbid it," Kate said in response. "You are not the only one responsible for this planet and it's people's safety. And if you think the best way to protect a planet is to hand over its greatest defender, then allow me to disagree."

"We're talking about one life. _My life._ Which I am giving up freely for _seven billion_. Again. It's none of your business how I choose to spend it."

"It is every bit my business. This isn't about you, this is about the Earth and how it responds to threats. And frankly, it's up to the people of Earth to decide. Are we to roll over every time someone threatens to destroy the planet and give them what they want? I don't think so. If we're to hand you over to them, it will be me doing the handing. And I'm not about to do that until we've exhausted all other options at our disposal. No, Doctor, we are not giving you up without a fight."

"But you can't win this fight," the Doctor argued.

"We can win, we were winning. It took us some time to get our defenses in place, but you bought us this time. The tide was turning. Not just here but across the US and China, and most of the major cities of Europe. That's what I was coming down here to report."

"Doctor," came the gravelly voice of the alien from the laptop speakers. "Perhaps you doubt me? Perhaps an object lesson is in order. Let's start with this London where you are hiding."

One of the soldiers put a hand to his earpiece. "The piranha are on the move again," he said. "They've regrouped over the Atlantic, and they're heading north. All of them ma'am. They're coming here."

"You see, Kate Stewart? Now that the mothership is in orbit, they will override any commands I feed the drones. I can't control them. Is London ready for a blitzkrieg? Once they burn London to the ground, where will they go next? How much are you prepared to lose?"

"We can still beat them," Pandora said.

"What?" the Doctor and Kate both asked.

"It's something I noticed in the videos. It's what the Doctor said earlier. They have two basic commands. Kill as many people as they can, and destroy any opposition."

"I'm sorry, Pandora, but I don't see how that helps us," Kate said.

"They never take evasive action. They have no sense of self-preservation. They flew straight into missiles while trying to kill people. Right into the path of anti-aircraft fire."

"That's great Pandora, but we don't have control of them anymore. I can't just make them play 'follow the leader into the killbox.'"

"Maybe we can," Osgood said. The Doctor turned to face her. She ran up to the laptop. "What if we were to add additional instructions onto their list, rather than trying to override their current instructions? The Droge, or whoever, wouldn't know what behavior to countermand. Like, they're supposed to kill as many people as possible, but what if we added, 'people tend to congregate in military installations'? Or maybe get them to see statuary as viable targets?"

"The Thames!" the Doctor said. "Viable targets like to congregate in the Thames. Ms. Stewart, line your anti-air along the banks!"

She spoke into her earpiece. "All troops to the banks of the Thames! Not you two!" she said when her soldiers moved. "You guard that box, and don't let him near it!" She walked swiftly toward an empty area of the room, speaking orders into her earpiece.

Osgood was tapping rapidly at the keyboard. "Budge over," the Doctor said. He nudged her aside and started typing a good three times as fast. He caught Kate's eye and nodded to her. "It's sent," he called. "The enemy will be lined up along the Thames." Then, under his breath, "If this works…" Osgood looked at him nervously.

He started biting his nails. "What are we missing?"

Pandora poked her head in between theirs. "What about the _actual_ viable targets? Those bridges over the Thames will be choked with people trying to get out of town."

"I'm on it," Osgood said, and stepped away, pulling her mobile out of her pocket.

"Enough of this room. Let's get somewhere we can see what's going on," the Doctor said.

"What about the locust chain?" Pandora asked.

"Either load them onto the cart, or leave them here. The plan will either work at this point, or it won't."

"All the same," Pandora said. "Could you imagine the laptop sitting down here, all by itself, and the alien commander just gloating to an empty room?" She hurriedly put the battery onto the cart first, then each of the locust they'd connected together. The Doctor wasn't waiting; he headed straight for the lift, and as Pandora got the last locust loaded, she hurried to catch up. The lift got crowded as first Kate Stewart, and then Osgood got on, each negotiating logistics on her mobile.

The doors closed while the Doctor stared out at the two armed men guarding his Tardis.

They arrived in the command center, just below ground level, to find a hive of activity. Several high-level officials were standing at the bank of monitors while clerks ran back and forth conveying messages and ferrying phones. Generals were standing around a long table, coordinating troop movements on its computer monitor surface. Trucks loaded with surface-to-air missiles were pulling into the motor pool at the far end of the room, and troops were lined up, waiting to climb on and head out.

"How soon until full deployment?" Kate asked one of the generals as they approached the table.

"The first installations are set up and ready. We're at ten percent. It's estimated ten minutes until both sides of the banks are loaded to capacity, ma'am."

"We have probably less than five. Do what you can to speed things up. More trucks at lower capacity would be a good trade off." She moved further along. "How is the evacuation progressing?"

"Outlying roads and bridges have been evacuated and cordoned off. We're pushing the line back in those areas. The city center continues to be a problem."

"Understood. Pull in civilian authorities and first responders. We may have to accept some casualties in this area, but I want everybody working to the last second to ensure they're as low as possible."

Osgood, the Doctor and Pandora pushed on to the bank of monitors. Pandora positioned the cart so the laptop was just in front of the Doctor. He looked down at it, frowning. "Just in case," she said.

The large monitor in the middle showed the massive swarm over the English Channel off the coast of Bournemouth. Confirmation was coming in, that it had passed over western France without incident. Confidence was high that it would do the same with England until it reached London proper.

The smaller monitors each had a feed from a traffic camera somewhere along the Thames from Windsor to Grays. Military vehicles could be seen setting up in some of the shots, but mostly it was a military cordon, keeping the civilians back.

"Contact at Salisbury. They're three minutes out!" someone shouted. The volume of conversation went up.

Pandora looked around. The line of trucks were gone, and the soldiers along with them. The overhead view was a close-up of the South of England. The red blob had begun to elongate, and was curving to the east. At this magnification, the blob could be seen to move. The screen updated every six seconds or so, and each time, the blob was a little longer, a little thinner, and a little closer to London.

More and more military vehicles were showing up on the traffic cameras, but they were still at no more than sixty percent capacity. Men in UNIT uniforms were unloading shoulder-mounted rockets, filling in the empty spaces.

"Those won't reload nearly fast enough." Kate's voice came from just behind Pandora. She was leaning in to have a look at the monitors. "We're not going to have enough surface-to-air. Captain Carter, where are you with those French fighters?" Unfortunately, she walked away again, and Pandora couldn't hear the response.

The next couple minutes were some of the most tense of Pandora's life, as the blob on the map moved steadily closer to them, and soldiers efficiently went about the task of preparing their defense, and clearing the remaining civilian population. The more military vehicles showed up on camera, the better she felt about their chances, until she looked back at the map and realized how little time they had left.

And then, the swarm was upon them. The first traffic camera all the way out in Windsor just showed the trucks firing off camera, followed by the soldiers with their shoulder mounted rockets. A number of objects could be seen splashing into the Thames on the very periphery of the camera shot, then the soldiers were mown down by gunfire from an unseen source. After that, all was still.

"We have engagement!" someone shouted.

The same story repeated itself on camera after camera. In between, reports came in from areas they didn't have cameras positioned. The swarm was taking heavy losses, and roughly ninety percent of the piranha that got shot down ended up in the river. But there were so many of them.

They got to Westminster Bridge. The concentration of UNIT forces there was heavier, and the swarm was visibly thinning, but they still took out the ground forces and continued on. Waterloo and Blackfriars were the same. What started as thousands of alien fighter jets was now down to a scant hundred.

UNIT had a large grouping at London Bridge and the brunt of its forces at Tower Bridge. Just outside, Pandora reminded herself. A small force defended Canary Wharf, but that was it. That was humanities defense against the alien threat.

Pandora looked around. People continued to field reports and inform the decision makers. Orders were given and promptly followed. People were updating the boards and tables and monitors, the tallies of dead and of remaining force positions were being kept. No one was talking about the fact that UNIT London has been all but wiped out. This must be the stiff upper lip that Churchill went on about. She was glad not to be expected to take part in this, because she just couldn't.

"Say again?" Kate Stewart was saying. She was back at the bank of monitors. She listened to her earpiece, then said. "Osgood, Doctor, your plan helped keep London from being wiped off the map, but they've overridden your commands now. The remaining swarm is circling and regrouping now between the Millennium and Southwark Bridges. Captain Carter, it's now or never. Lieutenant Bishop, break position and flank them on both sides. Don't let them leave the river!"

Then they heard the sounds of jets flying low over the city. "The French jets have engaged the enemy!" someone shouted.

"Get me visuals!" someone else yelled.

People worked fast, but not fast enough. When a feed of the battle finally came up on the central monitor, it was all over. The banks on both sides of the Thames were a mess of smoke, fire and bodies, and the piranha were gone. "What happened?" Pandora asked.

The command center was dead quiet while people listened for updates from the field.

A woman in a private's uniform stood up from her desk. "They did it! The enemy is destroyed!"

A cheer went up through the room. Pandora hugged the Doctor first, then Osgood, and before she knew it, she'd hugged several other people as well.

"Doctor," came the gravelly voice of the alien over the laptop speakers. The room became quiet again. "Don't think this little demonstration has deterred us. The bounty on you is an entire star system. That can buy a lot of robotic fleets. In an hour we'll have a force twenty times that size voidported in. Surrender, or we burn this planet."

The Doctor looked around the room with a somber expression. "Now the hard part begins," he said.

* * *

The Doctor called a meeting of Unit's scientific minds. Kate and Osgood sat at the table, and the rest of the spots were filled with holographic projections of leaders from around the world. Josh Carter was joining holographically as well, as he'd just returned his borrowed jet to an airstrip outside Calais, France.

"Hopefully you understand now that this cannot be won by force," the Doctor started. "If you continue to resist by conventional means, your people will die. And for what? We really showed a group of self-driving vehicles who's boss. No, to win this, we'd have to do it decisively. And that doesn't just mean killing the folks sitting out there in orbit either. They found me first, but that doesn't mean they're the only ones out there. If they fail to fulfill the contract, there will be a hundred more scrambling to pick it up."

He let that sit in the air. Even if Kate was stubbornly refusing to give in to their demands because of some misplaced family loyalty, perhaps some of the others would outvote her.

"If we are to do this, if this group decides that we defy all logic and continue to fight this struggle, we have to win so hard that no one would ever touch that contract. And then I leave this planet forever."

Pandora gasped. Hers seemed to be the only reaction.

"And why would that step be necessary, Doctor?" asked the Swiss representative.

"To stop the fools who might try anyway. The only way the Earth can strike so decisive a victory is if I improve your technology levels far beyond where they are. You would be a danger to anyone who tried to attack, save the Daleks, and perhaps the Sontarans. If they know I've left, and I will never return, the ones who would be after me for the bounty wouldn't risk coming to the Earth and face their own destruction just to prove a point to me. And secondly, because giving you that kind of technological bump would change human society in ways you aren't ready for. I'm not sure I could live with myself after that, and I don't want to hang about to watch what you become."

"Do you really think so little of us to believe we'd change that much?" the Japanese representative asked.

"Let me ask your question a different way," the Doctor said. "Do you think it would change North Korea's policies at all, if I were to give them an unlimited supply of long-range nuclear missiles and an impenetrable border shield?"

This caused an uproar, as everyone at the table expressed outrage at being likened to North Korea.

Kate stood up. "Let's settle down. I'm not prepared to take anything off the table at this point, including handing the Doctor over to them. But at the same time, I don't intend to roll over because some voice over a laptop has told me to. Now that we've demonstrated our strength, I believe we should start a dialog. This time between the elected and appointed representatives of Earth and the invading force. It may be the Doctor he's after, but it's not just him he's dealing with."

"A _dialog_? These are bounty hunters, not divorce solicitors! Unless you've got a handy star system to offer them…"

"Doctor, just what did you do to piss of this Droge of Gabrielides?" Osgood asked.

He was quiet for a moment. "It was a long time ago, and the details of it hardly matter. Suffice to say, she remains angry and the bounty hunters will never stop."

"Actually, Doctor, I don't think that will suffice this time," Kate responded. "We _are_ talking about the fate of the world here."

He sighed. "Gabrielidans are not unlike humans, though their species lives a bit longer than you lot. The Droge was a powerful and beautiful drug lord who synthesized a very dangerous drug. It made you feel incredibly good, and gave you the strength and vigor of ten men, but withdrawal was invariably fatal, and a single dose was enough to hook anyone. Her followers started carrying weapons that shot drug-laced needles, and her enemies either joined her to keep their supply of the drug coming, or they died horribly. She conquered half a galaxy this way. I proved to be a thorn in her side, and she recognized me as a threat. She placed the bounty on my head when several attempts to hook me on her drug failed utterly. I managed to synthesize an antidote to her poison, and introduced it to her distribution system. Her empire was thrown into turmoil. I didn't expect she'd survive, much less continue to be a threat, but, here we are."

"Well then. We know what we're up against. A foreign power with advanced technology and nearly infinite resources. And we know what we have to lose. Do we surrender the Doctor to certain torture, and run the risk that these invaders decide to destroy us anyway? Or do we stand up for ourselves, do what we can to improve our chances, and take on this cosmic bully? I say we put it to a vote. Who needs more time?"

No one needed any more time, and the vote was nearly unanimous. The Earth was going to stand behind the Doctor and face down the bounty hunters.

"All right then," the Doctor said, not the slightest bit pleased. "We have very little time, and the world must work in unison. My instructions are to be obeyed instantly, even if they are not understood. A partial success is the same as an abject failure. If I give the command, and Thailand isn't online yet, we have zero chance of surviving this. Do you understand?"

The general consensus was that they did understand.

He pulled his phone from the pocket of his hoodie. "Okay. We're going to use a few field effects you haven't discovered yet. I'm texting a list of components to everyone who is virtually in this room. The first will be for the power source, the second will be for shielding, and the third will be for a directed energy weapon. You'll find you've already got all the parts necessary to build each of them. There." He pushed the send button.

"I'll follow up with instructions of how to put them together. Every piece of machinery that you want to use in this fight will need the shielding. Every jet, every tank, every soldier in the field. The energy weapons will go on every dish telescope you have. For the ground and air forces, we will need to modify your guns. I will have instructions for that as well. And both will need the power source. Any questions so far?"

The holograms around the table were looking at the lists of electronic components on their phones. Several shook their heads, no questions were raised.

"Good. Lastly, there is no simple on switch for a thing like this. The fields need constant monitoring and adjustment. The software will be complicated. Osgood and I will work on that together, but in order for any of this technology to be useful, you will need to upload our software the moment you get it. We have barely forty minutes until their backup arrives, so move quickly. As in now."

* * *

Soon after the meeting, the Doctor and Osgood were at a computer, with the Doctor typing, not quite as rapidly as usual. "I won't be around to maintain this code, so I want to be sure you understand what it's doing."

"Doctor," Pandora said. "Come on. You're being a bit extreme, don't you think?"

"Extreme times and measures. I'm letting a pretty big genie out of a bottle here. It would absolutely kill me if you humans end up using this to conquer another world. I _have to_ spend some time away from you lot so that when that happens, I can be there to stop you." He looked up at Osgood. "Did you catch that bit here? The conversation can be a bit distracting."

"The triple integral? Yeah, no problem. I got that. But I don't get your hesitance. Doctor, we've had nuclear weapons in our arsenal for seventy years and never used them. I think you're selling us short to think we can't handle these."

"UNIT keeps advanced alien weaponry out of the hands of the public all the time. I'd expect you of all people to understand. But that's not the point. The point is, I didn't hand you the nukes."

"Wait, what was that?"

"I didn't give nuclear weapons to humanity. I'm not responsible for what you do with them."

"No, no. There." She pointed at the screen.

"Ah. That's normalizing the phase variance. Remember above, we set up those variables based on the fluctuations in the ambient flow? Now we compensate for that."

"Oh. I see. You're using feedback to make this self-sustaining."

"Exactly." He went back to typing.

Pandora was going to say something else, but chose not to interrupt. "Maybe we can talk about this more after we drive off the bounty hunters."

"Perhaps you can find out how they're doing on the weapons modifications."

"Here, use my phone," Osgood said, digging it out of the pocket of her lab coat. "Just say, 'Call Kate.'"

Pandora took the phone. "Call Kate."

Moments later, Kate Stewart was on the line. "How are things progressing, Osgood?"

"It's Pandora, actually. Things are good here, but I was calling you with the same question. How are the weapons mods going?" She put the phone on speaker.

"On schedule. The telescope modifications are complete, and we have an assembly line working on the weapons clips. Tens of thousands are already finished worldwide. We're a little foggy on their use."

"Just slam them into your guns like a normal clip. The action of the hammer will activate them, sending a beam out the barrel," the Doctor said without looking up from his typing.

"I see. Then we're just awaiting a first test of the —"

"No! No tests. They're likely to explode without the regulatory software, and we're still working on that. Just worry about distribution. The update will come over the air, so you just work on manufacture and distribution. Confiscate all the conventional rounds in the field and replace them. Bullets, mortars, missiles, all of it. Ordinary weaponry will only make them angrier. The next group will definitely have shielding against that."

"Understood, Doctor," she said. There was an odd tone to her voice, but she didn't say anything else.

"Doctor out," he said. "Almost there," he said to himself. He looked over at Pandora. "That means you can hang up."

"Oh, right," she said and hung up.

"And that will do it. Want to give the code a once over while I upload it to my phone?" The Doctor stepped away from the laptop and started thumbing madly at his phone.

Osgood looked it over. "Yeah, I think I get most of it, but I'd have to see it in operation…"

"Do you have one of the prototypes?" he asked.

"Yes. One of the shield generators." She pulled a small circuit board out of her pocket.

"These are supposed to be on a belt. They can get pretty hot. Never mind, we'll place it on this table. And where's the power source?"

"Here you go." She held out something that looked for all the world like a pipe bomb.

"Just put it in close proximity to the shield. Perfect, now stand back, I'm uploading now."

There may have been just the slightest shimmer in the air, but it was hard for Pandora to be sure. "How do we know it's working?" she asked.

"Easy. We test it," the Doctor responded. He took a slingshot from one of his pockets and a large ball bearing from another, quickly took aim and let loose. The bearing ricochetted off a point in the air about three feet from the shield generator.

Pandora walked up to it, feeling the air around the table, but got no resistance. She picked up the circuit board. "How come I could pass through it?"

"You weren't going fast enough to activate it. Here, catch." Pandora looked over, and he was aiming another ball bearing at her. He let loose, and she flinched, but it hit the shield with a crack and shot off in another direction. "Satisfied?" he asked. He accepted the circuit board from Pandora and gave it and the power source to Osgood. "You can put it in shrink-wrap, stamp a logo on it then sew it into your clothing and stuff. Now, let's get out into the open and send this code world-wide before the baddies show up."

* * *

Heading up the lift, they got the word that ships had started appearing in orbit by the thousands. The Doctor just nodded.

They got to the security section, with its x-rays and sniffers and mind-wipes. "None of that nonsense today. We've got a world to save," he said. He pointed his sonic at the three ton blast door, and it banged loudly, then slowly started to open. The posted soldiers started to object, but Osgood waved them off.

Once outside, they climbed a spiral staircase to ground level and walked out of the Tower of London through the Traitor's Gate. The Doctor started typing on his phone as he turned east toward the tower bridge. Then he held it up to his ear. "Ms. Stewart, the code's gone global. My part here is done." He held the phone outstretched like a microphone and dropped it. He continued on to the stairs up to the Tower Bridge.

"Something's not right here," Osgood said, looking down at the Doctor's cracked phone in the middle of the walkway. "Doctor, what's going on?" She pulled her own phone out and started fumbling with it.

"Sorry Osgood, I've kind of commandeered that," the Doctor said without looking.

Osgood held the phone up and said, "Call Kate," but the screen remained blank. She brought up the keypad and started tapping at it, to no effect."

"Three, two, one, and…" The Doctor pointed at her phone.

The Doctor's voice came out of its speaker. "Bounty hunters of Gabrielides, this is the Doctor. You can find me at the midpoint of the Tower Bridge. Encoded in this message is a set of global coordinates."

Pandora pulled out her own phone. The Doctor's voice was coming out of it as well. She looked around at the pedestrian traffic crossing the bridge, and saw several people pull the phone away from their face to look at it. A car was stopped in traffic, and she heard his voice coming out of the radio.

"The people of Earth intend to defend their sovereignty, as is their right. As I'm sure you can understand. They will broach no incursion, fighting to the last. But that has nothing to do with us. I will not allow them to die for me. Come and collect me, and let's be off, never to bother this world again."

Osgood grabbed him by the arm. "When did you even have a chance to do this? I watched over the code you wrote."

The Doctor smiled at her, a bit sadly. "I wrote a second program simultaneously. It was encoded into the depth of the keypresses. I'm sorry for the deception."

A group of UNIT soldiers were ascending the stairs, led by Kate Stewart. The Doctor's message was repeating again, and they could hear it streaming from the soldiers' radios.

"Doctor, what have you done? This was not part of the plan!" Kate fumed.

"This wasn't part of you're plan, Ms. Stewart. There's a difference."

"No, the plan hasn't changed. I do not intend to let them take you. Soldiers, form a cordon. Shoot anyone who tries to take him!"

"Ah, I see you've made the weapons modifications I gave you. Luckily they were nonsense. Those guns will make a neat little 'pew-pew' noise, is all. I've introduced a virus to the code. Nothing I gave you works."

"Then we'll re-arm. We'll undo the modifications."

"Stop, Kate. By the time you return with your primitive weapons, it'll be over. I'll be gone, and so will they."

Frustration showed on her face. "Doctor, why have you done this?"

"Because you don't decide for me. No one seems to get that. And you definitely don't die for me. No one has that right. Not ever."

The traffic was at a complete stand still, and people started getting out of their cars. People all over London had heard the Doctor's message, indeed, all over the world, and pedestrians were flooding Tower Bridge.

"I'm sorry, Kate Stewart, I truly am, but you didn't see. I've seen it before. I've been there. This would have become your life; a siege without end. There would be no commerce, no agriculture, no society. Everything you have would go to the war effort, and it would never end. She knows where I am, and she can make me stay here. I have to face this, and I have to do it on her terms."

Pandora stepped forward. "I'll — I'll go with you."

He smiled. "Not this time. Here." He pulled a chain from around his neck. On the end of it was his Tardis key. He let the chain coil in her hand, then he closed her fist around it. "For you. They're going to keep the Tardis in the Archive, and that's a fine place for it. But what it contains isn't for them. You guard that key like you guard your box, okay?" He looked sternly at Kate and the soldiers around her. "They wouldn't dare take it from you."

Tears were filling her eyes. The Doctor leaned in and hugged her. He whispered in her ear, "Prometheus." He pulled away, looking into her questioning eyes to be sure she heard him. "That's the code. Once I'm gone, you can enter that into any connected terminal, and that message will stop, and the shields will work again. The guns may be bullocks, but the shields will work. I've never liked guns, but I don't see too much harm in you mass producing shields. But only once I'm gone, got it?"

She nodded. She found so much meaning to the code he'd chosen. In Greek mythology, Prometheus was a companion to Pandora. He brought fire and light to mankind in their darkness, and was dragged away for it, to be tortured for eternity.

He went to Osgood next. "I hope you can forgive me, in time, for slipping that one past you."

"Oh, I'm sure I will. Not just yet, but someday. It was pretty clever."

"Out of curiosity, once I'm gone, will you wear anything of mine?"

"I don't know. Nothing stands out as distinctive really. Cargo pants? Too bad you abandoned the question mark motif."

The Doctor smiled. "I've got just the thing for you." He turned and pulled his hoodie and t-shirt down off of his right shoulder. A question-mark shaped tattoo was exposed, filled with circular Gallifreyan.

"That'll do nicely!" she said excitedly. She had her phone out in an instant, and snapped a picture.

He shrugged back into his clothing and turned back to face Kate this time. "Have you got something for me as well?" she asked. There was both defiance and resignation in her tone.

"Yes, actually." He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and placed it in her hand. She looked at him in shock.

He shrugged. "They'll never let me keep it, and better in your hands than theirs. Osgood's got the only working shield module right now. Between that and the sonic screwdriver, I'd say you were well armed." Osgood dug the circuit board and the power source out of her lab coat and handed those to Kate as well.

The sound of an engine whine came from high above them. They looked up to see the clouds parting as the gravity-drive slowly lowered toward them.

He shook her hand. "Goodbye, Kate Stewart. Never forget that you are a scientist first, and a soldier last."

He turned to watch the ship descend onto the Thames. It filled the area from the Tower Bridge past Wapping Steps. Metal shrieked against metal as it crushed ships and boats that were in the way. The crowd on the bridge pulled back, leaving a semi-circle of open space.

The Doctor stepped over the pedestrian barrier and waited.

The ship settled, and a ramp slowly opened up under its nose cone.

The Doctor looked around at the crowd gathered to watch. It looked like new year's eve. He caught a familiar face in the crowd, then others. People had come not just to see the alien craft, but also because they knew him. There was Phillip Whittaker, the man who's son was in a coma until the Doctor returned his essence from the planet Dor. A few rows back from him, he spotted Pandora's mum. He never caught their names, but further over, there were a group of tellers from the bank he'd kept from blowing up. He saw others, from previous lives. Francine Jones, Luke Smith, and others. Pushing his way to the front was the Swede with a group of homeless kids, including Blaise and Obelix. "Sitta," the Swede said, and Obelix dropped his rear to the ground instantly.

The Doctor nodded toward them, and the Swede nodded grimly back, folding his arms across his broad chest.

The ramp touched down on the bridge, and a group of armored aliens came out. The first was a giant, at least eight feet tall and proportionally massive. He wore shining blue armor that looked like it could stop a nuke.

Following him closely was a six legged creature, looking very much like a human-sized preying mantis with an exoskeleton made of amethyst. It had a quiver of spears on its back, and it held one in its front claws. The spear crackled with static energy.

The next one appeared to be a woman through all the armor, nearly as large as the man in blue. Rather than feet at the ends of her legs though, her armor was in the shape of hooves. The barrels of blasters could be seen incorporated into the armor at the back of each wrist.

Two smaller armored figures descended the ramp next. Their arms were bare and sickly white, covered in untreated sores. Each had a tank at the back of their armor that was pumping a white fluid through tubes and into their arms. They each carried massive rifles with three barrels aligned horizontally.

Lastly was a massive armored creature with two heads. At first it looked like two creatures, one hobbit-sized creature riding on the back of a troll-like one, but it moved as one, the heads swiveled as one to regard the crowd. The larger set of arms held blasters in each hand.

The Doctor stepped forward, toward the alien in blue armor. He looked him straight in the glowing digital eyes of his armor.

Blaise broke free of the crowd and ran toward them. The aliens quickly reacted, swinging around to point their weapons at him. Blaise stopped and held up his arms. "No! It's a trick! He's not the Doctor, I am. I'm the one you're here for." His chest heaved with his ragged breathing.

The Doctor's face went white. "No, Blaise! Don't do this! Just say sorry, and back away."

"Scan them both," said the blue alien in the deep, gravelly voice they'd heard over the laptop previously.

The minotaur woman stepped forward, and pointed one blaster at the Doctor, the other at Blaise. A moment later, she spoke. "This one has one heart, this one has two."

"Kill the human," the one in blue said.

"Wait! No! You don't have to —" the Doctor shouted.

The minotaur shot Blaise with an energy beam, reducing him to ashes instantly.

The Doctor stood in shock, staring at the space where Blaise had just been. Kate came up to be at the Doctor's side. She put a hand on his shoulder, somewhat for emotional support, but mostly for restraint.

"Take him," the one in blue said. He turned to head back up the ramp.

The mantis skittered across to stand in front of the Doctor. He got up on his hind legs, and with his middle set of appendages, placed a heavy set of cuffs on the Doctor's wrists.

Osgood gasped, stealing everyone's attention. "The galaxy is on Orion's belt!" she said, speaking quickly.

"What does that mean?" Kate asked.

Osgood widened her eyes and inclined her head toward the ship. "The galaxy," she said through gritted teeth, "is on Orion's belt." She gripped her own belt buckle, tapping on it for emphasis.

Understanding dawned on Kate's face. "Yes. Of course," she said. She turned and disappeared into the crowd.

The mantis grabbed the Doctor by the cuffs and shook him. "What was that about?" he said in a mechanical voice.

"I don't know," the Doctor said, "but it hardly matters now. You've got me, and we're leaving."

"Wait!" Pandora said, rushing forward. Guns swiveled toward her now. She stopped, a foot or two away from the Doctor. "Is this really goodbye?"

"I'm afraid so, Pandora. You see, I've realized something. This regeneration, I've been trying to figure out who I am. Or maybe I've been trying to deny who I am. I've been trying to fight against my own nature. But I've figured out what I've been running from. I've known it all along, what the tattoo means. Who I am."

"Who?" Pandora asked, tears streaming openly down her face. She got no response, so she asked again. "Doctor, who?"

The Doctor turned and flipped up his hood.

"The Oncoming Storm," he said.

He walked up the ramp, and the rest of the alien bounty hunters followed him. The ramp closed behind them, and the ship rose into the air, shot off into the night.


End file.
